The idea of having a newborn but having to leave at 6 a.m. to get to my office in South London, getting home at 7 p.m. if I was lucky, was not really my plan for raising my daughter. Aside from the injuries I’d sustained from childbirth which meant I had a maximum radius of around 100 metres, I would be driving that distance daily while running on little to no sleep. Whoever coined the phrase “sleeping like a baby” had clearly never had one.
Allow me to prefix this by saying I don’t hate work. I really don’t hate work. I live work. I love it more than I can express. And the past three years of semi-joblessness has me shattered.
Turns out my toddler’s a poser. Who knew?
My problem with jobs right now is that they don’t want me.
Now, I’m aware there are jobs out there. I am, with a toddler at home, pretty strapped with what I can do. If I get a job by tomorrow (and the only thing I know for sure is that there are three jobs which have rejected me), I get an additional 30 hours of childcare which would ultimately mean I can get some part time work in January. However, such is the state of things, if I get a job on Saturday, those additional hours don’t happen until April. Oh, and those hours are term time only, so that’s fun. Because the government wants us to work, but they want to make things as hard as possible. Who – WHO – is going to give a job to someone who can’t start for another four months?
And so the vicious cycle of life continues. The only work I would be able to do, given the circumstances, is either night work – which is possible if I’m capable of functioning on no sleep since I’ll have to look after the Freybster during the day – or work from home. And again, the jobs are available, they’re just not looking at me.
Now, I’ve been advised to tailor my CV to the job. That’s all well and good, but the only jobs I’m applying for are the ones I’ve previously held so realistically I don’t necessarily need to tailor a thing. I just don’t have the confidence right now to try for anything else.
I applied for a job at a company dealing with garden awnings, conservatories and general outdoor living. I’ve yet to hear back, but imagine my glee when the application required me to do a test focused on grammar and punctuation. And then, after completing that test, I checked out the website. Oh, a company has never needed me more than that one. Complimentary warranties (I presume this means you’ll receive five years of being told how smart, sexy and funny you are on a daily basis), double spacing, zero consistency. Will they take me on? I doubt it because let’s be honest, the last job I got was because my former colleague got it for me. The previous one was 10 years of “We really liked you, but someone else had more experience”.
The added woe is that my man’s uniform for his evening job is currently in the washing machine, and the machine is blocked. I tried to sort this out myself and be an interdependent woman, but alas, the filter is jammed. So then I found myself uttering the words I never thought I would hear myself utter: “I need a man!“
The excellent news is that there’s one en route, so that’s great. Apparently I need to get handy with tools, so that’s fine, but after draining as much as I could, I smell like wet, sweaty socks, and this does not please me at all.
On the other hand, the little one is really coming along with everything. I mean, OK, so she thinks a potty is something to play with, but her speech is coming along very well. She just tried to have a conversation with Santa Clause when her uncle sent her a personalised video from the North Pole, so that was worth a giggle.
Anyway, short and sweet – for me, at least. Now I’m going to get back to my fruitless job search and potentially rub some salt on that company’s wounds by deflecting their imminent rejection with a list of corrections. And that’s my Christmas sorted.
Live to you all. Hope your Christmas is merry and bright, that 2022 sucks a little less (ha ha, yeah, right!), and you all do the very best you can.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, but the confidence needs to come back quickly.
In the last episode of Life as I Know It, Travis had been promoted to Director and was doing really well. The only issue with the company, however, remains the owner.
For a while, things looked to have improved. I was still pretty down though. Haven’t had a moment to myself to write or even find a brain cell. I can’t … Continue reading In Which I Feel Stifled
It’s now been almost 14 months since Spawnio emerged from her comfy nest. I’m feeling rather drained by it all, and somewhat sad. It’s still a case of no conversation. … Continue reading Yep, This Mothering Thing Is… Hard
In stark contrast to last week, I feel a little less meh. Baby’s doing great, she’s growing well, and yes, there are moments when she’s crying hard for an hour or so (the sort of crying which only Daddy and Grandad can cure), but I’d say five days of the week are pretty positive.
Freyja’s pretty chatty, and now she’s testing her pitches out. The high ones. She’s pretty good. Plus, she seems so proud of herself every time she successfully pulls herself up into a sitting position using her Mummy’s or Daddy’s thumbs – depending on her positioning, she can also pull herself up into a wobbly standing position too, which draws a huge grin – that I can’t help feeling happy. (more…)
Since my last post I managed to spawn a gorgeous baby girl.
Freyja was born one year to the day of Mumm-Ra’s funeral, September 11, 2018. She’s now four months old and a very happy character.
The labour part was fine I suppose – my sciatica was at its peak (what I thought was its peak) but it doesn’t really matter until the midwives want you to stand up to let gravity do its job. I think in an ideal world I should’ve been dropping it like an elephant calf. (more…)
I’ve always been the fly-by-the-Seat-of-the-pants-type of person, which I now realise has its flaws because with my imagination, I’m now imagining flying by the seat of my pants, and it’s an interesting cartoony hedge backwards sort of thing. But I digress…
A few years ago I worked for Latin Post. In the last couple of months of that, it was a bit of a struggle getting them to actually pay. Can’t deny it, though, it was quite entertaining to see my boss going to war on my behalf, something I’ll always be grateful for. (more…)
It turns out that when you’re pregnant you have really odd dreams. It also turns out these dreams are all baby-related, even if they involve bearcats chatting to tigers.
Money Should Grow on Trees 